Live for Today

As I was going through my "Smash" book as some call it...I just call it my Jesus Journal, preparing for my upcoming Missions Trip to India, I came upon this page and paused as I read something I had written nearly five years ago.  "Learn from yesterday; Live for today; Hope for tomorrow." 

How often do we forget to live in the present?  The today?  We seem to reach into the next day or beyond and try to grasp hold of the things that lie within it and pull it in toward us.  That is impossible since we don't know what tomorrow holds.  Why do we do that?  Why do we want to push the fast forward button wishing that we could either push all the other buttons like Stop, Pause, Rewind besides the one that really needs to be pushed, which is the PLAY button! 

We get to our tomorrow, which becomes our today...the day that we were so concerned and worried over yesterday and now it's not as much of a concern because now tomorrow holds a whole new load for us to try to carry so we've got to try to reach forward into tomorrow not living today and we're trying to forget about yesterday.  Whew!  That's exhausting!  No wonder we're all wiped out at the end of the day.  That's not the kind of life that God intended for us to have.  He intended for us to have a complete, full and abundant life, which only He can give.  He tells us in John 10:10 in the Amplified version that, "I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)."  Let me tell you something...God's Word is timeless.  His Word is fitted to speak to us in the now from things of old.  His Word is always FRESH!  So, this is meant for you and me TODAY!

Today is the only day that we will have to live in it.  If we try to carry things that lie ahead in our tomorrows while we are living in today, then we will stumble and fall because we create a load that is much too much for us to carry.  Or sometimes we may try to duplicate today from yesterday picking up things that ought not be picked up by us!  It was never meant for us to carry in the first place.  God wants you to live in His Freedom.  That means freedom from things like fear, guilt, worry, bitterness, and death.  Surrendering to God these things that we try to carry either from our past or things we try to grasp out from our tomorrows  will give us the freedom to live for today.  We will have the freedom that Christ gives to be ourselves in our today.

To have Hope for tomorrow we need to trust and rest in God, allowing Him to take charge of each of our today's.  Letting Him set the course before us directing our steps one at a time.  I know this is challenging because sometimes life has us running around like race horses chomping at the bit ready to take off as if there were no tomorrow, but we cannot live our lives this way...chaotic and in circles. Instead, we need to be walking purposefully with God daily.  He always has hold of you.  Holding your hand.  Never letting go, but if we are too busy clutching things that aren't meant for us to hold, then we're missing something pretty awesome...we're choosing things that can't do what a Mighty God can and will do and has done for us.  Psalm 73:23 tells us very clearly what God does, "Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand."  How awesome is that?!

God has promised to give us perfect peace.  We know that He holds true to all of His promises.  We can be experiencing anxiousness, worry, concern, fear, guilt or whatever other baggage we choose to carry but when we surrender it to Him we can be assured that we will find rest, comfort, joy and peace as He lightens our load.  "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God."  Philippians 4:6 nasb
"You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you." Isaiah 26:3


I would like to end with this verse from Psalm 16:11 nkjv,

"You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

Let's keep our focus on His Presence in the present so that we can "Learn from yesterday; Live for today; Hope for tomorrow."

Take Care & Be Blessed,

Christy Krezman

Companionship

Companionship: the good feeling that comes from being with someone else. The fellowship existing among companions: company.


I am a very social person.  Outgoing and absolutely love being actively involved with others engaging in conversation, coffee dates or thrifting dates!  Any time there is a Bible Study, a Women's event, or a club to join I am there.  I can't get enough.  Then this summer happened.  I began noticing that God was doing a different kind of work in my heart.  One that I had never experienced before. 

When events were coming up, God spoke to my heart to say "No."
WHAT?!!....wait...WHAT?!!  But, I've always done this!  My friends, Lord!  I want to learn more about You and do more for You...with my friends!!  "Christy, say,  No. Not right now"   I didn't get it.  But I did it.  It was hard...extremely hard,  but I did it.

More and more God began withdrawing me from...
you name it...anything that I invested far too much of my time in, including...you guessed it... friendships!  He didn't sever ties to anything but withdrew me drastically from everything that I busied myself with that didn't allow for any time quiet time with God.

I felt so far removed that at one point I began feeling a potpourri of emotions such as - lowliness, broken-heartedness, crushed-in-spirit, isolation, feeling unseen, and forgotten.  The strange thing about all of these emotions was that I never felt alone.  Even though some of the emotions warrant singleness and aloneness I never felt that.  I always felt God's presence.  Now, hear me when I say this...I was not a quick study to catch on to this in the midst of it.  It would be in the midst of a few of my pity parties that God would make His way through the crowd of ONE and raise my head to reveal His awesome Self to me.  Imagine that!  He was even there at my party!! My miserable party...He was there!

In my time set apart, I began digging more and more into God's Word and applying His Truth to my life.  However, I was still experiencing these same emotions and my prayers consisted first, asking the infamous question of why?    Then I began asking for me to understand His plan for these emotions I was experiencing with confusion and really without reason...I wasn't feeling sorry for myself and I hadn't been hurt by anyone.    Later my prayers turned to surrender.  To allow Him to  use all of what I was feeling to do a work in me helping me to be sensitive to what He had for me to do...whatever that would be.  When I embraced that I began to see what He was doing through and in me.  God was preparing my heart for those He would bring across my path that were experiencing precisely what I was experiencing. 

But why remove me from everything?  Because all those things were my distractions.  My world...my mind was filled with too much happenings...too much noise.   Even with most of them being good and things for the Lord I busied myself so much so that I didn't leave any time or space for God Himself.  I would not have taken the time to even notice that God was tugging on my heart string.  It's so easy to fill myself with God things to overflowing that I left  absolutely no room for God.  He had to literally pour everything out from my life emptying myself to where all I had was Him. 

I love how God works with me.  It's not always pleasant at the time but He is always good and generous that He whispers, "Oh, child, hold on my dear.  A beautiful thing is happening.  I've got you.  Let me hold you, sweet child."   He not only does a work for some time but He also gives me a beautiful story that He gives me through the help of others that feed encouragement and Truth into my life through my life during my journey.  Literally, their words tie in together a story that God has already been penning and we're just finally getting to see the picture.
 
Here's the beautiful story (analogy) of what I experienced...

Imagine a caterpillar

 

 

 

They are lowly, slow moving inching their way around.  They may be vibrant in color but have guards out keeping others at a distance from seeing their true colors.  They're considered obscure...not well-known; not known to most people.  Like us, we put on what we want others to see when in reality we have these protective guards around us keeping others at a distance from truly knowing us.  We sometimes feel obsolete, not well-known.  We want people to like us so we worry about what others think.

 

We get so tired of living this way being pulled in so many directions.  Going what seems for miles in one direction only to have to turn back around and go back miles more.  Exhaustion.  Overwhelmed.  Overworked.  Weary.  Worn Out.  Swamped.  Defeated.  Deflated.  Discouraged.  Disillusioned.  These are just a few of the things that go along the route of my emotional and mental state when I was trying to do it all.

 

That's when God took action to one of my favorite verses, "Be still and know that I am God."

Psalm 46:10

 

 Envision this caterpillar finding the perfect set of leaves to wrap itself tightly in and hang upside down from a branch spinning itself a silky cocoon into a shiny chrysalis.  Now, it waits.  Psalm 27:14 says, "Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."

 

That's what God did with me when He removed me from everything.  He wrapped Himself around me that all I had was Him.  When I stopped resisting His embrace...treating it as such and not as a straight jacket...I waited for the work that He was doing, the 'Intensely Hard yet Incredibly Beautiful' work that He was doing in my heart.

 

Within its protective casing, the caterpillar radically transforms its body, eventually emerging as a butterfly.  Amazing, isn't it.  Something that once was so low to the ground covered with tiny little poky things that only inched itself around.  Now, with time, embracing, transformation and waiting, look what that caterpillar became...

 

 

 

a vibrant, radiating, colorful beautiful creature that has been transformed to fly high to soar far from place to place from fragrant flower to fragrant flower.

 

God does not look at who you are, but what you can be.  There is more than meets the eye.  He values our development more than our comfort.  He wants us to grow continuously.  He believes in us and He encourages us.  Sometimes this may mean taking us completely out of our comfort zone and removing us far from our social lives, like He did with me.  It's not forever.  It was just a short few months, and I am happy that He had me journey through this.  Ask me at the start of this journey when I was a lowly caterpillar and I would have given you a different answer.  No matter where you are in life, there is always hope because God is a God of HOPE!  Romans 15:13 says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."  Hope is what saw me through.  Hope is like oxygen to the soul.  Clinging on to hope and trusting in  God looking to Him each day with faith that He would give me precisely what I needed for that day and believing that He would do the same for me tomorrow...kept my hope alive.

 

Take away from this journey that I just traveled...

Literally,

 

TAKE...MAKE...ACQUIRE...SET ASIDE...ASSUME...GET HOLD OF...CHOOSE...EMPLOY

 

                                                           TIME

                                                            WITH GOD!

 

I would like to share with you some other versions of Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God." because I find it interesting some of the words that are used are exactly what I know the I very much struggle with.

 

CEV  "Calm down and learn that I am God."

 

HCSB "Stop your fighting --and know that I am God."

 

NASB  "Cease striving and know that I am God."

 

AMP "Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God."

 

CEB "That's enough! Now know that I am God."

 

TLB "Stand silent! Know that I am God!

 

Wow!  What did you think?  I really reverted back to childhood when I read the Common English Version.  "That's Enough!"  How many of you, like me, knew when your parents said those two words with the emphasis with an exclamation mark meant to immediately stop doing what I was doing...NOW!  God is like a parent trying to settle His overactive child just long enough to climb up into His lap...enjoy time with Him feeling His loving embrace. 

 

Did you notice that every single version reminded us to "Know that God is 'I AM."  That's powerful.  Far too often I tend to make Him smaller that who He truly is.  He IS the Great I AM!  He is GOD.  I need to be still, calm down, cease my striving, stop my fighting, let be, stand silent and be in awe of who God is.  He is I AM.  He is Worthy.  Worthy of my time.  Who am I to not make time for the One who "created my inward parts; knitted me together in my mother's womb; remarkably and wonderfully making me." (Psalm 139:13-14)  The Creator of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1)  God wants to be my Companion.  My constant companion.  I often am striving for others to hang out with, to do things with, to be BFF's with and so on, but God is patiently waiting saying, "Here AM I.  I AM your faithful Companion, Christy.  Will you turn to Me?"

 

I will make it a priority to carve out time for my God.  To stop trying to take charge of my life and turn it over to the One who actually knows what He's doing!  It's so easy to get short sighted.  That's why when we see what we think is a mountain looming before us God calls us to 'Come to Him all who are weary and He will give us rest.' (Matthew 11:28)  Sometimes our going to God requires us to retreat...meaning to take a few steps back to get a better focus...the ability to gauge at what is before us.  Retreat is simply a place of privacy, refuge, pullback and a period of withdrawal.  This gives us an opportunity for God to work within us to allow us to see that perhaps that mountain that we see is truly only a molehill that we can move forward in.  He equips us.  He strengthens us.  God is able.  2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work."

 

I pray that you take time for God today.  Even if it's just a moment.  Enjoy His presence.  His embrace.  He loves you. 

 

Take Care and Be Blessed, 

 

Christy Krezman